U.S. progress lacking since Sputnik era: PennLive letters

When Sputnik circled the earth and disturbed our national sense of pride, as well as our idea of what subjects to teach in school, a few friends and I were not too upset by the changes in education. Suddenly my world of chores – shoveling coal for the furnace and taking out the ashes – and sometimes my focus on homework – broadened tremendously to include wonderful stuff from the Edmund Scientific Catalog. You could hook up a doorbell to a solar cell, close a knife switch, and let the thing ring without a battery. Cool!

The problem is that we, decades later, have not progressed much. For apartment dwellers like me in urban areas, about the only useful solar-powered application available is a lantern, which might help the next time an electric storm or a flood disrupts power.

Large scale, however, the world looks a little different. Easily-secured oil and natural gas are essentially gone. Deepwater drilling costs hundreds of millions of dollars; companies can make money only if oil remains expensive. According to Wall Street analysts, reducing the cost of dealing with wastewater from fracking (once simply declared safe by the industry) is an issue.

With electricity bills rising nationwide, it is past time to support clean, renewable-energy capacity.